What's in a Gift?

 

When I was a kid I used to sit facing away from my twin sister when we got gifts. Sometimes we’d sit back to back as we opened the presents so neither of us would see the gift first. My twin and I are not identical. I am and have always been six inches taller than her. When we were kids I was very shy and she was radiantly outgoing. In our high school days, I was a swimmer and she was a star actress in the high school plays. Though genetically we were only as similar to each other as we were to our younger sister, our main identity was always “one of the twins.”

I’ve always loved giving gifts, but, because of my early twin years, I’ve never liked receiving them. I hate my birthday and every year I grit my teeth and wait until the day is over. When I meet someone on the street who has young twins and I tell them I’m a twin they usually ask if I have any advice. “Do not give them the same gifts,” I always say, “And, give them separate birthday parties if you can swing it.” 

Giving gifts is an opportunity to show another person that you are thinking about them, that you care about them. For the gift giver, it’s a chance to say, “I saw this and it made me think about you.” The gift tells the story of how the giver sees the recipient.

But for me, because I’m a twin, the receiving part of the experience got tainted early on. It was always tangled up — especially when we received the same gifts — in the confusion of what they saw in me and what they saw in her. 

Growing up, on holidays and birthdays when the time for gifts arrived I always choked up. What would I get? Would it be the same as my twin? And if it was, was it more suited to her than to me? I could never see clearly. I always read into it — that she was loved more; that they understood her better. 

I remember in seventh grade Tracy Latimore gave me two tiny glass animal figurines (one lion and one bunny) from the Hallmark store. I don’t remember what she gave my twin sister, but it was something completely different. I felt an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and connection with Tracy. She knew me. She could see that I was different from my twin sister. She gave me a gift that reflected me alone, not half of a whole.

The Christmas of my freshman year in college my mother gave me a pair of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. It was 1991 and that was the style. But I’d misinterpreted the gift. I cried my eyes out and locked myself in the bathroom for an hour because all I could think was that she thought I was fat. No matter the gift, she really didn’t have a chance.

Another year, just after I’d bought my first house, my mom sent me a set of tea towels with mushrooms on them along with a bag of dried shitakes for my birthday. I have always hated mushrooms. I pick them out of my food and reject them from my pizza. But my twin sister loves mushrooms. Maybe Mom mixed us up. But that was a crappy birthday. It brought me back to the days as a young twin, being lumped into a duo instead of being seen as an individual with different preferences, interests, and feelings.

A few years ago I started a list in my household — first on our phones, then on the wall — for my partner and my daughter to write down things they want. It was mostly for me so that, at gift receiving time I wouldn’t have to face the anxiety of getting a gift that would spin me back into my childhood despair of being misunderstood and unknown. 

This year on my birthday my mom sent me a check. She’s learned, I guess, over all these years, that I can’t handle the gifts. And my daughter and partner gave me things from “the list.” I’d managed to manipulate my family into catering to my birthday drama, but the day was still riddled with confusing emotions. 

My favorite gifts to give and receive are homemade. When I get a gift that someone has made themselves — cookies, bath salts, a poem, a plant they grew from a start — I think about the time they gave, a little piece of themselves. And even if I don’t use bath salts or like the flavor of cookies, I love the feeling I get when I get the gift.

Last night, the day after my birthday, my daughter and I went to Goodwill. I am working on a homemade present that I’ll give for Christmas and I needed some notions. Wandering around the store I felt excited and happy planning this homemade project.

On the way home in the car, I told my daughter (again) how much I loved the poem she’d written for my birthday the day before. She told me how she wanted to save money for a car. “I don’t really need any gifts,” she said. 

“Why don’t you tell your grandparents, parents, and aunts and uncles that you don’t want a gift this year — that you are saving for a car?” and, I threw in strategically, “What if we just do homemade presents in our house this year?” 

“That sounds good,” she said. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and felt happier than I had all day.